Taronga Zoo's General Manager Wildlife Conservation, Will Meikle, with 18 other zoo keepers and managers riding from Sydney to the Gold Coast for Australasia's zoos and aquariums to raise awareness of wildlife in National Threatened Species Week. Catch his regular blogs over coming days:

With the weather getting warmer, both the elephant calves have been going into the pool more often. They’re playing really well together and Pathi Harn tries to clamber onto Luk Chai’s back. It’s just as well that Luk Chai’s trunk functions well as a snorkel.

Beaver-tails, funnel cakes, baseball, peppers (capsicums!) and skunks. None of these were part of my world until recently, some of these weren’t even part of my vocabulary and in retrospect I think I still wish funnel cakes wasn’t.

The carnivore keepers are again getting to normal with their animals in their exhibits. The two Snow Leopards, Sabu and Kamala, are the 5 year old offspring of Samarra, the breeding female which stayed in the usual exhibit during the work.

There’s good news to report from the bird-watchers monitoring the Zoo-bred Regent Honeyeaters in Chiltern, Victoria. We released the birds over four months ago and there are still plenty of them around.

As part of a 10 year Centenary Master Plan upgrade, Taronga has submitted plans to build an Australian Habitat Exhibit (phase 1) which includes an overnight conservation experience called the Taronga Wildlife Retreat.